


to warm a winter day

by TheEagleGirl



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, asoiaf rare pairs week, the North is cold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 20:45:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17946809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEagleGirl/pseuds/TheEagleGirl
Summary: Cersei’s heart sinks before she even reaches the window. By the gods, she’s never seen so much damned snow. The lines of the castle are buried under it, and the snow covers the ground as far as she can see. When she sits back in her chair, she’s not quite hungry anymore. “I’m going to freeze up here,” she says faintly, and her maids titter around her.~~~In which Cersei marries Ned, and the North is so bloodycold.If only there was a way to keep warm.





	to warm a winter day

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following asoiafrarepairs week prompts:
> 
> day 3: winter  
> day 4: furs

“The warmest room in the keep,” Eddard had promised, when they arrived at Winterfell all those moons ago. He’d mumbled some more in that stilted way Cersei had come to expect about hot springs pumped through the walls, but Cersei had barely listened, already sighing in relief and pulling her heavy cloak from her shoulders for the first time in  _ weeks. _

And it  _ had _ been warmer then. But perhaps Cersei had just been so used to the cold inns and roads from her journey that any warmth at all felt heavenly. Now that winter approaches, however, she can’t seem to stop shivering, not even in her blasted chambers. Cersei is cold all the time, and more miserable for the fact that none of these damn northmen seem to even  _ notice _ how biting the wind is, how frigid the Great Hall is despite its large hearths. Her husband’s bannermen have the nerve to laugh when she arrives for the end of the autumn harvest feast, bundled in layers of furs.

She will be  _ damned _ if she shows them any weakness, though, and so suffers in silence. She complains to her husband in biting tones about everything else, from his disrespectful bannermen, too familiar with her by far, and his damned bastard’s wails keeping her awake at night, but not about the cold. She will not have him believe that she can be paralyzed by something as simple as the  _ weather _ . She will  _ adjust, _ as her handmaids have. This frozen wasteland her father sold her to will  _ not _ defeat her. 

Cersei has Jeyne Farman, though that is little comfort, to warm her bed at night. She and Jeyne had grown up together at Casterly Rock, them and Melara, and Jeyne suited her enough as a warm body to huddle next to.

“It is not truly so cold yet, Lady Cersei,” Jeyne says, when Cersei, in a moment of weakness, confesses that she feels like she is freezing alive. “It’s not true winter, according to the Maester. The coldest is yet to come.”

Cersei feels her face flare when even sniveling, cowardly Jeyne—who’d cried when Cersei told her she was to come North with her—tells her the cold is nothing to complain about, and says through clenched teeth, “Well, perhaps if I had your insulation,  _ dear, _ it would not feel so cold to me either.”

Jeyne spends the rest of the night so teary eyed that Cersei almost regrets the comment, but decides against apologizing. She’s  _ angry _ , by the seven, that Jeyne seems to be settling well into Northern life when Cersei can’t seem to do anything right. She misses court. She misses Jaime like a limb that’s been torn off. She’d even like to see  _ Tyrion _ at this point, and that’s when Cersei knows she’s gone mad. 

When her husband knocks on the door that night, it’s almost a relief to be rid of Jeyne’s barely suppressed sniffles, although Eddard is not much of an improvement as far as company goes. He visits her four or five times a moon, at the peak of her cycle, in hopes of an heir, for a half hour so filled with the tinges of  _ duty _ that Cersei could be asleep for it and not miss him. 

As always, they exchange the barest bones of pleasantries before he prepares her gently with his fingers and enters her. He always  _ asks _ if he can visit her, and Cersei nearly wishes he’d just come to her chambers, barge in and initiate... _ something.  _ It’s too much to expect of him, though, this honor obsessed husband of hers. She misses Jaime’s hard kisses, his wicked tongue when they fucked, whispering filthy suggestions in her ears in the few minutes they’d steal away from the world. 

Eddard Stark treats her like glass. She’s amazed that he has a bastard, if this is the way he approaches women. Cersei tries to imagine him seducing someone while he is thrusting above her, and the image is so strange she begins to laugh. She catches the noise right as it leaves her throat, turning it into a cough.

“Are you well, my lady?” He asks, pausing. Cersei wishes he wouldn’t. It will only take longer for him to finish, and she wants Jeyne back, to warm her.  _ It’s so bloody freezing. _

Cersei doesn’t realize she’s spoken aloud until her Eddard’s eyes widen. 

“Truly?” He asks, a furrow in his brow. “It’s rather warm in here, to me.”

If Cersei wasn’t mortified that she’d sworn in front of him, she’d laugh at him casually mentioning how warm her chambers are while still inside her. “It’s frigid,” she tells him finally. 

He breathes for a moment, and Cersei thinks he will go on as he has been, only to make a noise of surprise as he lowers himself closer to her, propping his weight up by his elbows, before asking, “Is this better?”

It is, actually, with his skin warm and against hers. Cersei nods mutely, unused to the proximity from him. He begins to move again, and his breath is warm on her cheek. It’s nice, she admits grudgingly. He’s warmer than Jeyne, and when Cersei adjusts under him so her knees are higher up and tighter against his body, he drops his forehead into the crook between her neck and shoulder with a groan, his lips on her skin and. It’s warmer than Cersei has felt in two moons. She likes it.

When it’s done, she mourns his heat almost immediately, though he makes sure to tuck the furs around her. “Shall I call in Jeyne to warm your bed?” Eddard asks, pulling his nightshirt on. 

Cersei shakes her head, and then says in a carefully controlled voice, “No, I’m fine for tonight.”

Cersei knows she’s beautiful. She knows her husband knows it too, though he tries to keep his expression blank when they're together. His eyes are as unguarded as she’s ever seen them tonight, and he opens his mouth—to say something, she’s sure—before settling on, “Good night, my lady.”

Her fingers are between her legs the moment he leaves, and when she peaks it is with a shudder and soft exhale. She’s finally  _ warm. _

  
  
  


 

Cersei is freezing again by the next morning, and spends a good ten minutes rubbing her hands before the fire before she can feel her fingers again. When her maids come to dress her, Cersei is already in a foul mood, and snaps at them for their tardiness. Her new Northern maids are not nearly so cowed by her sharp tongue as her old ones, which takes some of the satisfaction out of upbraiding them, but Cersei’s mood is remarkably better by the time she gets her breakfast. 

That is, until one of her maids pulls back the curtains in her solar and asks, “M’lady, would you like to see all the snow that fell last night?”

Cersei’s heart sinks before she even reaches the window. By the  _ gods, _ she’s never seen so much damned snow. The lines of the castle are buried under it, and the snow covers the ground as far as she can see. When she sits back in her chair, she’s not quite hungry anymore. “I’m going to freeze up here,” she says faintly, and her maids titter around her.

“It will be a bit warmer now,” one of them tells her. “The winds aren’t howling like they were yesterday, and the snow will have trapped the cold beneath it. Perhaps you’d like to visit the glass gardens, m’lady, they’re quite warm even in the worst of weather.”

“I’d have to go outside for that,” Cersei says, shaking her head. 

“Aye, but you cannot stay inside all winter,” the other maid says, rather impetuously. Cersei’s head snaps up and she fixes the girl with a flat stare. 

_ Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do?  _ Cersei wants to fume at the girl. She wants to cut her to ribbons, to throw all her frustrations at this  _ stupid _ child, but before she can even open her mouth, Jeyne enters.

“Lady Cersei,” Jeyne greets, cheery. She’s forgotten about Cersei’s remark last night, it seems, and Cersei shoots her maid another poisonous look. The girl barely notices, unaware how close she was to being dismissed for the day. 

_ Stupid. _ Cersei cannot believe she’s among such idiots, that they don’t even notice their blunders, that they do not  _ know _ how to speak to their betters. 

She catches the smile her maids exchange, though, as if they  _ know _ she won’t be visiting the glass gardens. Perhaps it is a joke, among the rabble of the castle, how their lady cannot stand a bit of a chill. 

_ I’m not weak. Your backwards Northern country will not defeat me. _

The heat rises in Cersei’s chest, like a snake curling around her heart. “Jeyne,” she says impulsively, though she knows she will regret it later. “What do you think of taking a walk in the glass gardens?”

  
  
  
  


The gardens  _ are _ warm, Cersei concedes, though she’d piled her heaviest furs on before even stepping outside. It’s a moist, wet heat, and with the snow resting heavily on the glass walls and ceiling, hemming them in, she feels contained in the warmth. She finds that she’s  _ enjoying  _ herself, a welcome surprise from the monotony of her days spent feeling useless, having no one to entertain her, nothing to do. The winter roses are in full bloom, and Cersei clips a few, to bring back to her rooms. All said, it is a thoroughly diverting time, and only spoiled when she and Jeyne have to trek back to the keep through the snow. 

Cersei is almost tempted to tell her husband she will be living in the glass gardens until winter is over.

But like all things since she’s come to this blasted country, her happiness doesn’t last long. Jeyne retires before supper, citing a headache, and when Cersei is readying herself for bed, she gets word that Jeyne is sick, shivering and dripping snot. 

Cersei wouldn’t much care for Jeyne’s state of health, except...she cannot warm Cersei’s bed tonight, and there are no other ladies she can ask, and the weather only worsens. By the time Cersei slips under the furs she can hear the wind howling against her windows, and the heated pan her maid placed between the covers cools far too quickly for her to fall asleep comfortably. It’s not long before Cersei’s teeth are chattering, and soon she’s curled into a ball and shivering. 

_ I will not show weakness,  _ she scolds herself, when the thought rises to ring her maids and ask them to stay with her through the night. They are  _ beneath  _ her. She will not believe these insipid Northern  _ brats  _ are stronger than her, and more importantly, they cannot know how paralyzed she is by the cold, when they live so naturally within it. Bestides, it wouldn’t be proper for her to sink so low as to sleep with a chambermaid. Cersei’s pride has been taking blows since her betrothal nearly a year ago, and she refuses to humiliate herself further. 

For the next hour she teeters between her choices--to shame herself and ask for a servant to come to her bed, or try to sleep in the fitful bursts that come with slowly freezing to death. It’s not until she’s been laying there for some time that Cersei realizes--she  _ does _ have another option.

The halls are empty when she pads down them in her slippers and dress robe. She has never made this trip alone, though she knows the way. Eddard comes to  _ her, _ as is proper, and only rarely. Usually, that is how Cersei prefers it, but she is willing to make an exception for tonight.

_ And only tonight _ , she reminds herself. Jeyne will be well tomorrow, she  _ must _ be, or Cersei will wring the girl’s neck herself.

The guard at her husband’s door starts when he sees Cersei, hair unbound and streaming, glittering in the candlelight. Cersei sees the man swallow, straighten. “L-lady Stark,” he stutters. “Is something the matter?”

“I need to see my husband,” Cersei says, in as commanding a voice as she can. The guard looks unsure for a moment, but at her glare steps aside with a nervous, jerky gesture. 

The Lord’s apartments are big, bigger than Cersei’s room, but draftier to be sure. She pushes open the door between his solar and his chamber, not sure what to expect. Will he be awake? How will she explain why she’s come?

She needn’t have worried. Her husband is in bed, and as Cersei approaches she can see that he’s asleep. Perhaps she can slip in and out before he wakes in the morning. Perhaps he never needs to know that she came to him.

Her hopes are dashed when she approaches the bed and he stirs. His eyes open, and in the light of the fire burning he sees her. The surprise of seeing her is evident in his face. “Cersei? What are you...Are you alright?” 

He sounds utterly confused. Cersei stands over him for a moment, taking a breath.

“I’m cold,” she says by way of explanation, “and Jeyne is ill, so she cannot stay in my chambers.”

With that, she kicks off her slippers, pulls back the furs and slips in next to Eddard as gracefully as she is able.

He’s still muddled with sleep, Cersei can tell, but Eddard Stark is a  _ gentleman-- _ as much as a Northman can be, she’ll give him that--and moves over to make space for her. When she lays down next to him, he pulls the furs over her and, after a moment of hesitation, pulls Cersei close.

_ Oh.  _

It’s heavenly, to be so warm. Cersei sighs, and curls her cold toes against Eddard’s shins. She can feels him startle at that, before he huffs out a choked, disbelieving laugh.

“Good night,” she mumbles into his nightshift, and with that, she is off to sleep. 

For the first time in weeks, she sleeps through the night without interruption, tangled in her husband’s arms. 

When Eddard rises the next morning, Cersei watches him dress through heavy lidded eyes. She knows she promised herself she would only stay the night with him this the once, but he was so much warmer than Jeyne, and perhaps his company was not truly such a chore to withstand. She thinks that perhaps,  _ perhaps _ , she could get used to him.

Until then, she can pull him back to bed. There are other ways to warm up, after all, and Cersei finds that she can enjoy that with him too.

**Author's Note:**

> big thanks to Tia (archmaestergilly on tumblr) for helping me come up with some of the ideas for this story. 
> 
> If you liked this, please let me know in the comments!


End file.
